Many people find laptop shopping to be a bit of a chore. In previous
years, the selections available would always leave one wanting more. This has changed in
2003 with Apple, Compaq, Dell, Toshiba, and IBM all producing svelte yet
powerful laptops, making the past dreams of a true desktop replacement a
reality.

Excellent battery life usually is near the top of any list of must-have
laptop features, with a good warranty a close second. My previous laptop had been a
Gateway Solo 2500 which gave me about 3 hours of battery life when I first
purchased it. The Solo 2500 also had a great warranty (which came in handy one
more than one occasion). So with these requirements in mind, it was time to
score a new portable. When the dust settled there was one laptop still standing: The IBM
ThinkPad T40. After reading about the prowess of its Pentium M CPU and excellent battery life,
we were excited about
buying ours and digging in.

The laptop

We decided ultimately on the T40 2373-91u. The full specs on the machine are
as follows:

Pentium M 1.6 Ghz

512 MB PC2100 DDR

Hitachi Deskstar 80GB, 4200rpm

14.1" SXGA (1400x1050)

ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 / 32 Meg

Intel Pro1000 gigabit Ethernet chipset

56k V.92 modem

DVD/CD-RW

Usually the first remark you hear about the T40
is that it is built like a tank. Indeed, the rumors are true. While it is not
completely indestructible, I have no fears about my T40 getting damaged in any
minor calamity. While the lid gives a little when twisted, its magnesium alloy
construction makes it nowhere near as malleable as the plastic on most laptops.
The lid is attached to the base with two large metal hinges, and it would take a
lot to break them off. The lid is also designed so its edges come around the
base a little when it is closed. This provides a little more assurance against
injury when you throw it in your bag.

All T40 models have dual USB 2.0 ports, S-video out, dual PCMCIA ports, and a parallel port. I would have loved to
have seen FireWire standard on this notebook, but I don't think the omission is
anywhere near being a deal breaker. The other drawback to the T40 is that only
one of the memory slots is user-accessible. So you might want to max out the
base RAM when ordering.

As far as software goes, the T40 is light in that department. The laptop comes preinstalled with
Windows XP SP1, Norton A/V (Trialware),IBM recordnow (a.k.a., Stomp Recordnow), and Acrobat Reader.Most of the other applications IBM included
basically duplicate the functionality of other programs. One example is the IBM
Update Connector, which updates drivers and IBM software. We could not think of
a reason to use this instead of Windows Update. Another odd inclusion is IBM
Access Support. This software includes a handful of diagnostics and
troubleshooters for the computer, which do about the same thing as the
troubleshooters in Windows Help. In general, Windows comes with better software
to do the same things all of the IBM software does. Fortunately, you are in no
way forced to use any of these utilities. At least IBM does not load the system
with apps that just waste away in the system tray.

There was no media packaged with the laptop, so in the case of total
hard drive disaster, you are required to call IBM. What you get instead isa restore partition on the hard drive. This makes
it easier for a large company to deploy their own images for easy restoring, but
to the average user it means you pay for 6GB of disk space you can't use without
reformatting. It also means that if you have a hard drive failure, you will be
SOL. Fortunately, IBM will speedily send you a restore CD if you request one
from tech support, or will send you a new hard drive if it is completely
unusable. It would be nice if you could request to
have it shipped with the computer.

One of the things to keep in mind about the T40
is that it is designed in many ways for being deployed in droves across a large
business. Features like Access IBM are more useful to large IT departments than
to individuals who just want a laptop.

The ThinkPad comes with a standard three-year limited warranty, with a one-year warranty on the battery; pretty much
standard issue. If
you so desire, a more comprehensive warranty is available, which provides for next-day on-site repair.
Past experience with the IBM warranty department

has been pretty good, they are very hands-off, no off-base questions asked.